[London] Alice Lee AW 2012

Photo: AliceLee.co.uk

Knitwear designers Alice and Lee showed their Autumn Winter 2012-13 collection in the upper room at Vauxhall Fashion Scout's Freemasons Hall home, a beautiful marble setting with wrought ironwork dividing the catwalk space into two rooms. Their fourth season, the pair's careers under the knitted-together name began with New Gen sponsorship and now sees them collaborating with the like of Giles and stocked by Selfridges. With models' faces covered by hair and angular wedge shoes customised with paint, the collection was dark and romantic while nevertheless remaining clean and urban. The designers played with texture, opening with a collared cape and leggings, while a cardigan-slash-bomber jacket featured knit top and faux fur from the bust line down, an altogether different way of emphasizing shoulder blades. Leather stitching was used on the edges and running into garments as lines, blocks, and curving up to create soft shoulder shapes. One jacket was ribbed on the bias across the back and faux fur trimmed coat lapels. Hemlines were graded, or longer at only one side. The show notes reproduced Dante Gabriel Rosetti's Sudden Light and with lyrical setting and classical literature in mind, this was futurism "without the sci-fi", as they themselves put it. With a largely monochrome, earthy palette, cobalt blue and tomato red stood out all the more clearly. The closing look of rose mask in red, black and white, shown with all black gown summed this up perfectly.

I HAVE been here before, 

              But when or how I cannot tell: 

          I know the grass beyond the door, 

              The sweet keen smell, 

    The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

          You have been mine before,— 

              How long ago I may not know: 

          But just when at that swallow's soar 

              Your neck turned so, 

    Some veil did fall,—I knew it all of yore.

          Has this been thus before? 

              And shall not thus time's eddying flight 

          Still with our lives our love restore 

              In death's despite, 

    And day and night yield one delight once more?

Photos: AliceLee.co.uk

Photos: AliceLee.co.uk